


Comrade Zim

by Deadybones



Category: Invader Zim
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:54:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27283009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deadybones/pseuds/Deadybones
Summary: After a series of mishaps, Zim begins to doubt whether even his own incredible abilities are enough to rise to the challenge of his mission. Moral support arrives from an unexpected source...
Comments: 8
Kudos: 15





	1. Chapter 1

_In memory of Lucille Bliss_

\--

The evening sky was the color of a day-old bruise, and underneath it, Zim’s walk home from skool felt longer than usual. GIR greeted him from the couch on arrival.

“You’re home late today, junior,” he said in a voice borrowed from TV. “What did you learn in skool today?

Zim slammed the door behind him. “Pitiful _human_ fractions.”

“Was it hard?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, GIR!”

Zim wanted to get back to his _real_ work, but a mess of frustration had been fermenting in his guts all day. He paced the living room like he was on display in a Tralfamadorian zoo. He tried summoning the cool grace under pressure he knew he was famous for. But it was no use: a rant was imminent.

“Except they do it in this _STUPID_ way! My amazing intellect could have solved those equations immediately, if only they’d have let me use the correct base-6 method. But _noooo_! ‘Show your work,’ she says... _Bah_! And how exactly do you ‘ _carry_ _a_ _one’_? You riddle me _that_ , GIR! Riddle it!”

The system of rigs for removing and disinfecting his disguise descended from the ceiling, but with Zim in such an agitated state, he wouldn’t stay still long enough for them to do their job.

GIR hopped down from the couch and tiptoed over to where his master was kicking the air. A crumpled-up paper fell from a pocket of Zim’s tunic.

“Master! You dropped this!” GIR passed the note back to Zim, but Zim dropped it with a shriek. His PAK-legs snapped out at the fight-or-flight reflex and carried him to the edge of the room.

Worn out, Zim finally surrendered to the comfort of the couch. The disguise rig began to peel off his human face. He rubbed at his crisp, pink eyes and glared at the paper.

“Stupid human test,” he hissed. Try as he might, Zim couldn’t push the day’s events out of his mind.

As was her habit, Ms. Bitters had returned the class’s math tests in order of highest grade to lowest. Zim shifted uncomfortably in his seat. The sick ritual was taking too long. The Dib already had _his_ test returned, and was sitting there smugly across the room. Zim waited, and waited, and waited. Finally, Ms. Bitters stopped at his desk. He saw the large red writing at the top of his paper: _**0/20, F- See me after class, Zim.**_

Cold dread pressed down on Zim all afternoon. He knew what happened to the Defectives back home. Who knows what tortures a far less civilized race like the humans would have in store for failing math?

The last bell rang, and his classmates rushed out. With the room empty, Zim approached the teacher’s desk, fingers hovering above his self-destruct switch.

“Look, Zim. I don’t like this any more than you do.” Ms. Bitters tented her long fingers under her chin. “But unless you do something about all this constant failure, I’ll end up stuck with you another year.”

“But the examination itself was flawed! See? The _x_ was right there!” Zim protested, pointing at the paper. “Right next to the triangle!”

“It isn’t just math, Zim.” She brought up Zim’s class files on the older-model screen behind the blackboard and clicked through them.

“You’re flunking civics, too,” she said. “For this test on the different branches of government, you just wrote ‘Zim’ three times.”

Zim wrung his hands, wracking his brains for a counter-argument. “What about the science fair? Surely Zim’s project was more than enough for a passing grade!”

“Perhaps.” Ms. Bitters played the security footage of the incident. “But given your project _ate_ the entire science department, I suppose we’ll never know.”

“And can you _honestly_ say you don’t find that neat?”

Ms. Bitters shrugged. “Maybe a little.”

The video cut out right at the point where Zim’s project released an EMP blast. Ms. Bitters rose from her chair and hovered to the window. Zim followed in small, uneasy steps. Some children were poking at a dead squirrel on the lawn.

“I’ve noticed you’re not like the other children, Zim,” said Ms. Bitters. “That’s going to make life unpleasant for you.”

Globs of sweat gelled under Zim’s wig. He began to panic.

“No, you’re wrong!” He clambered up the woman’s torso and shook her by the shoulders. “Zim is more like the other children than _all_ of the other children combined! I swear!”

Ms. Bitters peeled Zim off by the scruff of the neck and dropped him to the floor. Zim flinched: this was it. His final undoing.

Only it wasn’t. The tall woman stayed still, her gaze fixed out the window.

“You know, Zim, I used to be a bit like you. Until--oh, nevermind.” The old woman looked at her watch.

“Long story short, Zim: if you’re lucky, there might be _somewhere_ out there where your deviation from the norm can be exploited rather than punished.”

“Eh?”

“But it’s not skool!” Ms. Bitters growled. “So hit the books, or it’s the underground classrooms for you!”

Zim was terribly confused. If he wasn’t being punished, and his clever disguise was working, what was the point of all this?

Ms. Bitters slithered back to her desk. “Any questions?”

“Two,” said Zim. “Am I free to go, officer?”

“Yes. Go home and tell your parents they’re doing a terrible job.”

“And are there really underground classrooms?”

“What do you think?”

“No.”

“See?” said Bitters. “I said you were smarter than the rest of them.”

Zim sighed in relief. He couldn’t believe his luck. He’d escaped with his life—and more importantly, the mission.

The hallways were refreshingly quiet at this time of day, with all the schoolchildren gone. Or so Zim thought: from behind a badly-positioned trashcan jumped—who else?—the Dib.

“Hey, Zim!” Dib cooed. “Heard you’re having trouble keeping up in class… That’s too bad. I’d ask if you wanted a study buddy except, y’know. I hate you and all.”

“Begone from all up in my grill, Dib-stink!” Zim hissed at the filthy human. He noticed another, marginally less filthy human leaning against a nearby locker, and nodded politely to her. “Gaz.”

Without looking up from her game-box, she returned the greeting: “‘Sup.”

Zim had bigger things to worry about than immature gloating, but the Dib-child followed alongside, just to irritate him.

“What kind of ‘advanced alien race’ can’t even pass pre-algebra?” Dib pretended to examine his nails. “You know what, Gaz? Maybe we don’t have to worry so much. I don’t think they cover world domination in remedial math.”

“I’ll cover _you_ in remedial math,” Zim had shot back, before he went for vengeance with a kick to what he understood to be a critical human weak point.

That was the highlight of Zim’s day. But here in sulk position on the couch, even this wasn’t enough to cheer him up. He was trained in the highest levels of Invader protocol: it was written in his source code. So _why_ was he struggling with something as simple as human skool? It was enough to drive him to shmoop.

Maybe he really _was_ \--No, he pushed the thought out of his mind. Nothing like that. Zim was _very_ smart, and doing a _very_ good job, Zim reassured himself. The Tallest were _so_ proud of the good job he was doing. In fact, they placed _so_ much faith in him they hadn’t felt the need to check on him or even answer his calls in months.

“Computer!” Zim called out. “Fire some lasers at that test to make me feel better.”

“That’s not what they’re for,” the computer admonished.

“Enough of your sass! Make with the lasers!”

“Yeah, the lasers!” GIR agreed.

“Making with lasers in five,” said the Computer, which counted down for safety before leaving the paper in a tidy pile of ash.

“Good work, Computer!”

“Just doing my job. Oh, by the way: incoming transmission, sort of.”

“Incoming transmission? That must be the Tallest calling to surprise me with an award!” Overjoyed, Zim dashed in front of the television. “Computer! Connect the--wait, ‘sort of’…?”

“That’s what I said. Incoming transmission, sort of.”

“Wait…” Zim lifted an antenna. “How can it only be _sort of_ a transmission?”

“Oh, you’ll see.”

“Just hurry up and put it through!”

A large red brick crashed through the living room window. Zim shrieked and dove behind the couch.

“Aw, poor birdie.” GIR waddled over to the brick and looked at it sadly, brushing off the glass before handing it to his master.

Zim snatched the brick away and set it down for inspection. A piece of paper was wrapped around it with a rubber band. One of Dib’s little pranks? Little human-dog-pig must be running out of ideas. But as he unfolded the note, Zim’s eyes sprung wide.

“It’s in Irken…?”

It was the stilted, servile register of someone who’d learned the language in one of the Empire’s Re-Education Fun Camps, but perfectly legible. It said:

_Comrade,_

_Please forgive the analog delivery of this message._

_However, due to your situation, we understand the necessity of untraceable communication._

_We beg the honor of your attendance at the following coordinates in precisely 1.5 local revolutions._

And beneath the string of numbers:

_In solidarity,_

_The Resisty_


	2. Chapter 2

The coordinates led to an abandoned Benny’s on the outskirts of town. There were no humans for miles, and under cover of night, Zim felt secure undisguised. Still, he was deeply uneasy.

Zim re-examined the letter. No doubt, it was an underhanded attempt to thwart his Mission. Why else would a notorious terrorist organization seek out Irk’s most respected Invader? Perhaps they meant to kidnap him for ransom, or worse. And to top it all off, the Tallest had _still_ not responded to his request for backup. Zim steeled his nerves. He would have to face this peril head-on.

“GIR!” he commanded. “Ready the counter-insurgency measures! GIR…?”

But the robot was nowhere to be seen.

“This is no time for games, GIR,” Zim called out in a shaky voice, eyes scanning the empty parking lot. “Show yourself!”

Zim heard a cheerful voice ring out from the other side of the building: _“Master! Lookit what I can do!”_

Zim sighed in a mix of relief and frustration. He found GIR wedged into the side of the restaurant, his lower half sticking out through a plate-glass window like he was tunneling through it. Strangely, nothing above that point was visible in the glass. It was like GIR had been sliced cleanly through the middle.

“I got stuck,” GIR explained.

“But _how_... _?_ ” Zim paced a half-circle around his assistant, puzzled at the sight. “Oh, who cares. Just get out of there!”

Zim unfurled his PAK legs for leverage and pulled with all his strength. Out GIR popped, no worse for wear. But at this jolt, the structure of the Benny’s began to warp where they’d touched it, jiggling like a well-made flan as it returned to its original shape. The lights inside the restaurant flickered on, revealing humans milling about with their coffee and waffles. Only not quite: they were missing faces, and wobbled like waves in a vat of goo.

Zim pressed his face to the glass. “What _is_ this...?”

 _“Brilliant, isn’t it?”_ A voice rang out in reply, crackling through an outbound communicator. Zim stumbled backward in shock.

_“The finest in Massive-grade procedurally generated cloaking technology, blending in seamlessly with the local biome!”_

“Oooh,” Zim and GIR murmured approvingly.

_“Repurposed for peace!”_

“Aww.”

 _“But let us not stand on ceremony..._ ”

An enormous slipway clanged out from the roof of the building with a rush of effect smoke. It slammed down to the asphalt, inches from Zim’s feet. As the air cleared, a male Vortian descended the ramp, flanked on all sides by a large motley crew of various conquered races.

“We meet again, Zim!” he cried.

“Oh, Captain Lard Nar,” vomited a slug-creature. “He’s more beautiful than I dreamed.”

 _Lard Nar…_ The name registered vaguely at the back of Zim’s mind. “Vort Research Station Nine Lard Nar?”

“Oh, wow! His eyes are _super_ pretty.” A hovercone zipped up to Zim, much too close for comfort. “Can I touch your eyes, man?”

Zim swatted it away, but the invasion of his personal space seemed to trigger a rush of enthusiasm, and soon he was swallowed up by the crowd -- cheering, shaking his hands, demanding autographs, touching his pretty eyes.

“Get away!” Zim shrieked.

“Comrades, please! Give him space.” The authoritative Vortian pushed through the scrum, pulling Zim away from the scrum. “We have much to discuss.”

Before Zim had time to protest, Lard Nar had begun to usher him up the ramp and into the negotiation room of the holo-Benny’s-ship. Between them sat a simulated plate of waffles and coffee, room-temperature steam rising from the cups.

Deep aboard the Resisty vessel, Zim felt in over his head. But true Invaders never show fear. He scanned the room for anything that could have been used as a weapon, but he couldn’t trust his eyes. Everything from the tables to the algorithmically-generated humans shimmered with the telltale fuzziness of hard-light.

The human-size booths were ill-suited to Vortian knees, so Lard Nar leaned awkwardly over the table in a pose that struck Zim as strangely conciliatory. This was hardly the po-faced engineer Zim vaguely recalled from VRS-9. But he didn’t seem quite the genocidal war-criminal the Almighty Tallest had described in the last State of the Empire puppet-show, either.

“You look tense,” said Lard Nar. “Are waffles not to your taste?”

Zim scoffed, and sliced off a square. Bland, but passable. Yet how could Zim be anything other than tense? He was seconds away from appearing in a gruesome hostage transmission, with his SIR unit was trapped outside, entertaining the rebels with Urth folk-dances to buy time.

“On behalf of the Resisty, please accept my apologies for not reaching out sooner, Zim,” Lard Nar began. “To our shame, even we had fallen for all that propaganda calling you ‘dangerously incompetent’ and ‘short’. If only we’d realized sooner--”

Zim broke his silence to interject: “That’s a stupid name.”

“Isn’t it, though? I keep telling them that! But that’s democracy for you...” Lard Nar shook his head with a sad laugh that turned into a sigh.

“But to return to my point, Zim, it all makes sense now! You’ve _always_ been a chaotic force of wanton destruction.”

Zim rubbed his chin, perplexed. “And you agree this is...impressive?”

“Of course!” replied Lard Nar. “A tactical genius of your caliber comes along only once in a generation!”

“They do?” Zim’s eyes snapped wide in surprise. He was not expecting such a warm reception. “I mean, yes, of _course_ I do.”

Lard Nar’s antennae coiled and uncoiled rapidly in excitement. “Horrible Painful Overload Days 1 and 2… The assassination of Miyuki _and_ Spork… The Devastis blackout! The disruption to Impending Doom 1! And by the stars, to top it all off, the _Florpus incident!_ You were the hero behind it all, Zim!”

He heaped praise on Zim’s glorious accomplishments, one after another. None of this _should_ have been a surprise for Zim. He’d been telling himself this for centuries. He was a certified military genius; an unstoppable death machine. But how nice to be getting some credit for a change!

Zim leaned back into the booth and smiled. All schmoop was banished from his mind. Who needs pre-algebra when your brilliance is known across the galaxy? Even to your sworn _enemies_? How do ya like _them_ space-apples, Dib-face?

“And so...” The Vortian extended a hand across the holo-table, a toothy smile on his hopeful face. “Won’t you join us, Comrade Zim?”

“Aw heck, why not!” replied Zim. But he stopped mid-handshake: “Wait, in what?”

“Why, the destruction of the Irken Empire, of course! You’ve been sabotaging them from day one, after all!”

“Eh!?”

Zim pulled his hand away in shock. His mind spun. True, Zim _was_ incredible. And of course, he _was_ proud of his trail of destruction dating back to smeethood. That was all true. But at the expense of the Mission? Of the Empire herself? The thought sickened Zim. How could this groveling Vortian clod be so right about _one_ thing--Zim’s amazingness--while being so wrong about this: his devotion to the glorious Empire?

“No!” Zim stumbled to the floor. “Zim would _never!_ ”

“But Zim, please! You’re our only hope!”

“No! You _lie_!”

The commander’s goggles began to mist over. “And so humble…”

Zim stumbled away from the table. He ran through a repeating maze of booths and tiles and holographic, faceless humans, desperately searching for the exit. He pinged his coordinates and sent a message over his portable comms: “My Tallest! Urgent backup request, I repeat, URGENT--”

A reply text flashed across the screen: _new transceiver, who dis_

Zim lost his balance and stumbled down the hidden door to the slipway, his fall broken by one of the squishier rebels. He grabbed GIR by the antennae and deployed his PAK-legs, racing to the safety of the Voot.

“But _Masterrrrr,_ ” GIR whined. “Don’t you wanna play with your new friends?”

“No! It’s a psy-op, GIR!” Zim shot back. “They’re messing with my brains…!”

“Oh! So they don’t think you’re cool?”

“Of course they do!” Zim growled. “But, yes--but no, but--!”

Zim clawed at the side of his face and growled. A war raged between his brains and his spooch. This was all wrong, so wrong! And yet…

In his confusion, the words of the Bitters returned to Zim: _“Long story short, Zim: if you’re lucky, there might be_ somewhere _out there where your deviation from the norm can be exploited rather than punished.”_

Zim stopped in his tracks and looked back across the parking lot. Was this what the Bitters had meant?

If so, it was not a wholly unpleasant feeling.

From his heightened vantage point, Zim saw the sun was beginning to illuminate the jagged outline of the city.

Zim had so much left to accomplish on this planet. To leave it unconquered would be unforgivable. But, Zim decided, it was worth hanging on to this moment of validation to reflect on in times of schmoop, even from so woefully misinformed a source.

Zim descended slowly to the ground and retracted his spare legs. The Resisty had gathered in a concerned huddle at the foot of the Benny’s ramp.

“Zim appreciates your acknowledgment of my brilliance,” Zim explained to them in a loud, clear voice.

“But, I must remain here to work my brilliance in mysterious ways. In fact, they’re so mysterious even _I_ don’t understand them sometimes! Your heads would explode if you tried. So, please, off Zim’s planet. Shoo.”

An engineer in a portable ventilator scratched the back of his large, grey-green head. “So, like, a double agent…?”

The hovercone cut him off: “Sssh, dude! He said don’t try to understand.”

“Very well, Comrade Zim.” Lard Nar gave a salute as Zim walked back to his Voot. “I respect your brave decision to stay undercover. But if, as allies, the Resisty may be of assistance--”

Zim froze. A dark grin crept across his face.

“Well...” he said, turning slowly. “There _is_ one wretched Empire collaborator among the local inhabitants here...”

\---

Later that morning, Dib was startled awake by his father knocking on his bedroom door.

“Good morning, son!” Professor Membrane said warmly. “And good news: your friends are here for a visit.”

Dib reached for his glasses and frowned. “That’s odd... I don’t have any friends.”

“Well, there’s a group of foreign exchange students downstairs, and they’re very keen to see you.”

**Author's Note:**

> This piece was written for the incredible Invader ZIM Zine!! Thanks so much to the mods and contributors who made this happen!


End file.
